President Obama tackled what was no doubt one of the more daunting items on his to-do list Tuesday when he called up his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and presented his take on what Putin should do about Ukraine.

Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and the other “Left, Right & Center” panelists discuss the loss of public trust in government reflected in the widespread response to the measles outbreak, the 2 million jobs added over the last three months and, as the leaders of Germany and France prepare to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the prospects for progress on Ukraine.

Pankaj Mishra, Indian author of “From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia,” manifests the direction of thought and feeling that seems most likely to save populations caught in the violence of increasingly opposed cultural traditions after Charlie Hebdo.

French President Francois Hollande addressed the Institute of the Arab World on Friday, in a bid to reassure French Muslims, who fear being the victims of a collective guilt campaign or reprisals after the attack of radicals on Charlie Hebdo.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The Rev. Madison Shockley says it’s wrong to think of terrorists as Islamic or Christian, we reality-check free speech in France, Elizabeth Warren pulls her party to the left, and Rory Fanning stands up to military recruiters.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The Rev. Madison Shockley says it’s wrong to think of terrorists as Islamic or Christian, we reality check free speech in France, Elizabeth Warren pulls her party to the left, and Rory Fanning stands up to military recruiters.

Charlie Hebdo ordered 5 million copies of its defiant post-massacre issue to be printed, and the first run of 3 million sold out in minutes. For those who want to know what all the fuss is about, the satirical publication is now available on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone.

The recent excitement in Paris produced an occasion of great surprise to an American observer, certainly to one who witnessed the transformational fear exacted from America’s governing elite by the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

An estimated 3.7 million people rallied across France on Sunday in response to the Charlie Hebdo attack that left 17 people dead. Jeremy Scahill talks Monday about the “heartening” display of people in the streets and the “circus of hypocrisy” performed by the world leaders who attended.

A transcript from an interview between a French TV station and one of the men suspected of killing 12 people in the attack on the office of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday shows the suspect claiming, before he and his brother (pictured) were killed in a raid, that his actions were in defense of the prophet Muhammad.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: We investigate what al-Qaida—or anyone—has to gain by killing cartoonists. Also: NASA finds habitable planets far, far away, and the FCC is doing something behind closed doors that you should probably know about.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: We investigate what al-Qaida—or anyone—has to gain by killing cartoonists. Also: NASA finds habitable planets far, far away, and the FCC is doing something behind closed doors that you should probably know about.

The European scholar of Islam, the publisher of Harper’s Magazine and the renowned American graphic novelist discuss the meaning of freedom of speech in the aftermath of the slaughter of 12 people at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.

Without Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, it is not at all clear that Sharif Kouachi, one of the gunmen the French police are searching for, would have gotten involved in fundamentalist vigilanteism. And if he hadn’t, he would not have gone on to be a point man in murdering the staff of Charlie Hebdo along with 2 policemen.

In a new biography of the French girl freedom-fighter, it isn’t the maid of Orleans who receives the blazing light of scrutiny so much as the society that engulfed her and the literary imagination in which she endures.

Chocolate, wine, coffee—these are just some of the foods we’ll lose due to climate change; an American expat living in France explains why “Americans are suckers who have themselves to blame for crappy broadband”; meanwhile, a town in Alaska may become the first place in the U.S. to tax churches. These discoveries and more after the jump.

On Sunday, parliamentary elections in Ukraine and “stress tests” and reviews conducted by the European Central Bank will “determine the entire continent’s direction for years ahead,” financial economist Anatole Kaletsky writes at Reuters.

Given the current dismal state of the European Union economy, which is now firmly under German control, one must ask why Angela Merkel and her government continue to champion austerity, seemingly against all reason.

Although the governments of several European countries weren’t exactly willing to corroborate this story, The New York Times reported Tuesday that al-Qaida has made a consistent practice of kidnapping European citizens for ransom, and it has paid off very well.

Police are looking into whether the ex-president of France received illegal campaign donations from L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and Libyan tyrant Moammar Gadhafi; Facebook has been manipulating users all along it seems; meanwhile, scientists have discovered a human protein can clean drinking water. These discoveries and more after the jump.

The five nuclear-legal countries—China, France, Russia, Britain and the U.S.—are deploying new nuclear weapon delivery systems or have indicated the existence of programs that would, an authoritative study says.

The writer of the best-selling book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” that’s on everybody’s mind these days stopped by “The Colbert Report” on Monday for a reckoning with the faux-conservative host.

The far right took election victories in France, Denmark and Austria among continentwide contests Sunday that produced a record number of parliamentary members who are unfavorable toward the European Union.

Rwanda on Sunday told France to face up to the “difficult truth” of its role in the 1994 genocide, amid a major diplomatic spat on the eve of commemorations marking the 20th anniversary of the killings.

The issue of rightist nationalism as a threat to the European Union and the peace of the new Europe has preoccupied Europeans since 1945, when the predecessors of the EU—the West European Union and then the Coal and Steel Community—were created to assure that Nazism or some totalitarian counterpart would not again rise in Europe.

The French have been shaken by François Hollande’s curt, 18-word termination of his relationship with “the woman of my life.” The whole matter has taken a significant political turn with the unexpected and noisy anti-Hollande street demonstration that followed the president’s statement. This protest was unanticipated and heterogeneous in composition and turned seriously violent.

France is set to impose a “millionaire tax” on companies that pay salaries in excess of 1 million euros ($1.38 million) a year. Business leaders and soccer clubs are furious, calling the measure anti-business.